What follows is a landmark moment in British animation in a fearless adaptation of a Richard Adams novel directed by Martin Rosen, exploring the Homeric themes of conflict, slaughter, genocide and the clash of civilisations, but with rabbits.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 27, 2024

…Watership Down has a violent edge that reflects nature, which some might find at odds with the cutie patootie animation, but surely that’s exactly the point…it’s got a tough, environmentally sound message that was hard-hitting in 1978, and still is now.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 25, 2024

A band of rabbits must leave their warren to find safety in a film that, even in a digital age, still has the bloody force to scare young minds.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 23, 2024

Trying to forge a relationship with the film ends up feeling like an overall empty experience.

| Original Score: C | Aug 28, 2022

I love the book and I think... that this is a worthy adaptation.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 21, 2019

The movie is the antithesis of the modern standard, plodding and patient, unbothered by flashy bright images or relentless comical interludes.

| Sep 28, 2015

Although this is an animated film featuring cute rabbits as the main characters, this is far from a children's movie, and considering the violence and horror to be found in this film, it is rather surprising that the MPAA passed it with a PG rating.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Mar 27, 2015

The film's careful balance of humanizing the rabbits while also recognizing the realities of their inherent nature (which is more territorial and combative than cute and cuddly) gives its conflict a particularly sharp edge

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 5, 2015

The animation style veers between poetic and prosaic.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 4, 2015

A rather faithful adaptation of [Richard] Adams' book, as well as a milestone work of independent animation.

| Original Score: 8.5/10 | Feb 26, 2015

It's a work deeply enamored with its source material, and determined to do right by it, even if it means frightening kids, baffling parents, and embracing whatever style works.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 23, 2015

...lovely to look at and fun to listen to, but dull and lethargic in spots, too, and sometimes brutally savage.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 3, 2008

A rare movie that keeps kids on the edge of their chairs without inducing in their parents an overwhelming desire to escape theirs for a smoke in the lobby.

| Sep 4, 2008

A beautifully realised animation, Watership Down ultimately works because it doesn't dilute the violence and drama of Adams' book with a rose-tinted lens.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 3, 2008

Expertly and realistically animated, this version of the popular novel didn't seem to have an audience.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 3, 2008

A brief spark of imagination survives in a prologue sequence, designed by the great John Hubley before he was fired from the film. The rest is blandness.

| Sep 3, 2008

The rabbits' interactions mirror those of human behavior, and so too does the film possess a startlingly tangible sense of death.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 20, 2008

Artful, pretty forgotten (and it should not be) animation of best seller.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 17, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 6, 2006

The 'camera' takes a conventionally objective viewpoint, perpetually rolling over rolling countryside, which effectively robs the plot of all its terror and tension.

| Jan 26, 2006